The Washington Teachers Union won a long-standing battle with the D.C. public schools caused by the unfair implementation of Michelle Rhee’s teacher evaluation program called IMPACT.
https://www.dclabor.org/home/wtu-settles-excessed-teachers-case
WTU SETTLES “EXCESSED” TEACHERS CASE3/6/2019 DC teachers will be getting over $5 million in back pay, thanks to a settlement between the Washington Teachers’ Union(WTU) and DCPS, WTU president Elizabeth Davis reports. “It has taken several years of litigation and negotiation to reach this point,” Davis said, “but we believe this represents an excellent result for the affected teachers.” The settlement is a result of the union’s grievance involving teachers fired – or “excessed” — in 2010 by then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Under the settlement agreement, each teacher who was terminated by DCPS as a result of this excessing will be entitled to compensation ranging from $38,000 to $105,000, depending on when the teacher was terminated and the teacher’s years of service at DCPS. “It has been an honor for WTU to pursue a remedy for DCPS’s unlawful actions in the 2010 excessing case and several other cases,” said Davis. “I am pleased that we were able to bring this matter to a successful conclusion for all teachers affected.”
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Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, hailed the settlement:
| WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Washington Teachers’ Union reached a landmark settlement with District of Columbia Public Schools over teachers terminated by former Chancellor Michelle Rhee:
“This settlement doesn’t take away the hurt and shame Michelle Rhee inflicted on so many great D.C. teachers—but after a long fight, it is a small step toward vindication for those who suffered from her top-down, test-and-punish policies that have failed both the arbitrator’s test and the test of time. “Instead of helping teachers get what students need, Rhee embarked on a blame-and-shame campaign that was as ineffective as it was indefensible. There is a straight line between the Rhee agenda—which tried to strip educators of any voice and dignity and reduced students to test scores and teachers to algorithms—to the current walkouts in which educators are fighting for an appropriate investment in public schools. Teachers fight for what students need. That is as true now as it was when Michelle Rhee denigrated their voice. “What happened a decade ago still stings, but the teachers in Washington, D.C., who were wrongly fired will take some measure of comfort from this settlement; and their unions will continue to fight to make sure the wrong-headed mentality that pitted students against their teachers never arises again.” Background The Washington Teachers’ Union, an AFT affiliate, has reached a settlement with District of Columbia Public Schools over the union’s grievance involving teachers “excessed” in 2010. The overall value of the settlement agreement is more than $5 million. Under the settlement agreement, each teacher who was terminated by DCPS as a result of this “excessing” will be entitled to monetary compensation. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Too bad it won’t come out of her pocket.
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Agreed!!!
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Yes, there should be a way to go after her pockets too!!!
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Agree. GregB. If the money did, there would be far less corruption to the core.
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My thoughts exactly! She shouldn’t come out of this unscathed!!
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Yeah, she TOTALLY cashed in on her con job what with speaking and consulting fees and all the other grift. I am still amused by the fact that after her brand turned rotten in the public eye she made a lateral move to working for Miracle Grow, a fertilizer company. None of her trolls and sycophants could ever refute the facts about the failure of her agenda or her marketing pitches in support of it. I’m proud to this day that I got banned from some social media platforms for calling her out on it all and giving no quarter.
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The DC government never admitted that Rhee was a failure. First they replaced her with her deputy, Kaya Henderson, to keep her legacy alive. Then the mayor insisted that any replacement had to be cut from the same cloth as Rhee and Kaya. So now they have Lewis Ferebeee, who led the privatization of Indianapolis’ public schools. (The guy in between was a Broadie and didn’t last more than a few months after he tried to use his pull to get his daughter into the best school.)
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Good, but it’s not enough.
Firstly, the amount given to each teacher is less than 2 year’s salary. Given the possibility that it took at least a year to find a new job (and for some, many more), this barely covers lost salary. However, for many relocation was necessary (and relocation of their family, as well. Furthermore, there’s no compensation for the psychological stress of being fired unfairly and the resultant physical problems as a result.
Secondly, the ‘penalty’ imposed will not deter future use of similar flim-flam and is, therefore, grossly inadequate.
Even ten times this amount would have been too little.
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This settlement does not compensate teachers for lost pensions as a result of having lost a job. Even if a teacher gets job in another system, the pension lost would be substantial, particularly for fired senior teachers.
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not to mention losing connections for referrals/recommendations: many teachers would not even be able to locate those short term administrators, managers, coaches, facilitators and supervisors — that endless chain of top-down blame-placers who were so suddenly and regularly moved around the system
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Yes, it is good, in that it attempts to address the difficulties imposed on teachers by a thoughtless and egotistic woman. And yes, it is not enough since those teachers suffered much by being fired and having to simply deal with the consequences as best they could.
Given the present teacher strikes though, It does serve to boost teachers’ morale letting us all feel that standing up is worth it.
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This is such wonderful news. Now, let’s see the same happen in response to similar Demented Ed Rhee-forms around the country.
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Second that!
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What about the principal who was fired on-air? And how much of that is coming out of John Merrow’s pocket?
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John Merrow made over a million dollars from PBS for his cheerleading for Michelle Rhee and once commented that it was “great fun” covering Michelle Rhee, including the piece where she fired the principal on air.
Of course, that was before he had an epiphany and realized that Rhee’s claims were not all he had cracked them up to be (to put it mildly)
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She has no regrets,,,,also no heart or soul…
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At this point in time we now realize none of these harsh measures did anything to improve education in the US. Her legacy is now one of unfair and unjust practices based on a subjective focus that degraded the lives of teachers, principals and the lives of the students themselves. None of it works.
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Calilgirl – we all know Rhee has no regrets. She’s beyond hope. But Merrow is now pretending to be one of us – like he’s been one of us all along. He needs to admit to and atone for his role in promoting Rhee and the other “reformers”.
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Sorry for the typo in your name, Caligirl.
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oh, the pain of remembering
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Love your Kipling below!!!! You Kiple with the best of them!
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I see I’m not the only one who hasn’t forgotten about Merrow’s role, Dienne.
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Merrows role was instrumental and he profited handsomely from it.
It is great that he came around to the truth, but he demonstrated beyond any doubt with his previous biased hack reporting that he is not a real journalist.
What he did should make any real journalist cringe.
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Of course, our hostess with the mostest on this blog also had a change in her thinking and came away from the dark side, too. But Diane differs from Merrrow in that she never would have demeaned teachers or their work.
In that clip you posted above, for example, Merrow scoffs at the standard pay scale for teachers, based on years of service and graduate credits earned and touts merit pay. He also is dismissive of the high rate of teachers considered excellent – how can 97% of teachers be considered effective when kids have low test scores?
In MA, we have three years of induction into the profession, essentially, when a teacher is provisional and can be dismissed from a position with no reason or due process. To be hired for a fourth year, a school admiistrator vouches for the person’s capacity by offering a contract which changes that staus from an at-will employee to a contractually protected one. Those three years would seem adequate to filter out the folks who can’t cut the mustard. In fact, my union did a bit of research and found that for veteran teachers who began to have difficulties in the classroom, nearly all had one of these three issues: substance abuse problems; chronic physical or mental health problems; or suffered a change of life issue such as divorce or a death of a close relation.
MA law also requires that a teacher obtain a masters degree within the first five years of their career to attain professional status. (I think this is wrong headed because a teacher has a heavy lift in a classroom for the first three years, but whatever.) Salaries aren’t terrific, the cost of living is high, time is constrained, graduate school is expensive and there is no reimbursement. If you are required to earn credits, you are entitled to be compensated by a predictable salary scale.
That Merrow didn’t bother to look behind the façade of reformy ideas at the reality is where he failed in his duties as a journalist. Diane, as a researcher, did her due diligence. When the evidence didn’t convince her she changed course. I call that integrity.
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One has to wonder: what sort of person revels in the misfortune of others, fzctually finding someone’s on air firing “great fun”?
That’s wrong in more ways than one.
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Amen
Thank God for the long awaited battle to a Erradicate unintelligent knowledgeable thinking of a wise woman and a wise man coventious and covert actions of life liberty and the educating of our little boys and girls in the DC public schools continue to keep the fight for we have a larger battle to work with teaching for the test as a postmodern of empowering will to go forward and do great things thank you again!
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If Rhee ever comes clean and apologizes, it will be too little too late. The harm she did spread far and wide, and she got national recognition in that Time (or was it Newsweek?) spread where she was portrayed as a reformist ass-kicker who got rid of the deadwood in the teaching profession. I hope someday she gets her just punishment.
Teachers have long memories about this kind of disgraceful treatment of our noble profession. Rhee will be remembered in infamy with all of the other self-anointed “reformers” who were actually demolitionists:: Tony Bennett, John Deasy, Kevin Huffman, Hanna Skandera, Chris Cerf, John White, Janet Barresi, and many others I’ve forgotten. Those faux-leaders deserve nothing more than scorn and ridicule for their thoughtless embrace of these terrible ideas.
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Rhee was on the covers of both Time and Newsweek as the saviour of American education.
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Media Made
Rhee was tailor made
Like tea and Gatorade
Like fleeting TV ad
Michelle was just a fad
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and Time, like Merrow, moves on to do its best to benefit from now pushing ‘the other side…’
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I was terminated in 2009 after teaching in DCPS for 22 years. Am I getting money back?
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I’m with you and several others in the 2009 They don’t want to hear our story. We were the first ones. We were sent letters at the last minute and not one reason in the dcps internal or archive file as the reason. Just a letter thanking you for your service. And when the teachers Union were contacted. It hit the media that’s why
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I was one of those terminated teachers. My school was closed and we were told that we would be placed, but I was not and received a termination letter at the end of the school year stating that I didn’t fulfill my contract. Who do I reach out to?
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The Washington Teachers Union.
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Are any of us getting money back? Whatever happens NEA and AFT and UTLA won’t be part of it.
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Or respond
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Fired a disproportionate number of teachers of color. She, and the reformers, have done untold damage to civil rights and meager gains in equity. Shame is their name.
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Nearly everything about Reform was racist, from the firing of African American teachers to the closing of schools in minority neighborhoods. What those teachers and schools needed was help in the way of resources, but I stead what they got was blaming and shaming.
The very idea that TFA Ivy league elites would ride in on their white horse and “save the day” in inner city schools is highly racist — and very much in keeping with the attitude in the poem The White Man’s Burden.
It is the ultimate irony that an African American president was behind all of these policies.
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I don’t think it was ironic so much as inevitable – like only Nixon could go to China. If Bush had tried to pull half the educational malpractice against minorities that Obama did, the racist intent would have been too evident for people to let it happen. But a black man can’t be racist, can he?
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Ilhan Omar has called out Obama’s other policies which were also debilitating to our democracy, and has of course been attacked for it:
“As she saw it, the party ostensibly committed to progressive values had become complicit in perpetuating the status quo. Omar says the “hope and change” offered by Barack Obama was a mirage. Recalling the ‘caging of kids’ at the U.S.-Mexico border and the ‘droning of countries around the world’ on Obama’s watch, she argues that the Democratic president operated within the same fundamentally broken framework as his Republican successor.
“ ‘We can’t be only upset with Trump. … His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,’ Omar says. ‘And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.’ ”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/08/ilhan-omar-dean-phillips-minnesota-democratic-party-225696
Teachers have long seen behind the curtain on the Obama presidency, yet many others don’t want to acknowledge and deal with the facts.
Obama, though a Black man, grew up in a mixed race family in some privilege, attending private schools in multi-cultural Hawai’i. His pedigree isn’t unlike those of other presidents, though the color of his skin has certainly set him apart from the other 44.
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I’ve said worse things about Obama and Arne than Omar
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But you’re not a young Black immigrant woman in a hijab.
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Take up the TFA burden —
Send forth your Ivy Best —
To schools in inner city
To give the standard test
Instill the grit and rigor
In ignorant and wild —
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the TFA burden —
And take the bronco ride
And fill the kids with terror
And check their wild side
By grabbing bee from table
And swallowing it whole
To make kids pay attention
Accomplish Wendy’s goal
Take up the TFA burden —
The savage wars of Rhees —
Fill full the mouth with bumble bee
And bid the talking cease!
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the TFA burden —
And reap the old reward:
The blame of Diane Ravitch
The hate of those ye guard —
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: —
“Why brought they us from wildness
From ignorance of night?”
Take up the TFA burden —
Ye dare not stoop to less —
Nor call too much on hedge fund
To donate and invest
By all your tests and rigor
By all ye leave or do,
The inner city people
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the TFA burden —
Have done with childish days —
The lightly profferred laurel,
The easy, unearned praise.
Comes now, to grace your vitae
Through all* those thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
*two
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With apologies and thanks to Rudyard Kipling, of course
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I mean, look at this.
https://twitter.com/MuslimIQ/status/1104729537311473664?s=20
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She must be doing something right (or is it left?) if she is incurring the wrath of both Fox News and Nanny Pelosi
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SomeDAM –
I agree!
Brillant take on Ruyard Kipling this morning! Would it be okay with you if I post it on twitter?
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Be my guest, Christine
All my stuff (and Rudyards stuff) is fair game.
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Done!
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Bill, George…anything but Rudyard!
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Also, New Orleans terminations and the jailing of the test cheating teachers was racist…the test cheating being a response to merit pay…that was set up by the reform crowd….a merry go round of bad stuff that does nothing for our students…
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Yeah, that was a total miscarriage of justice. The system was barely questioned and it’s coercive nature was pushed aside. Not only was the education system attacked via attacks on the teachers, the legal system was used to finish the job.
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I am interested in how this plays out.
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What about the year before in 2009? More teachers were involved during her first round of these inhuman acts. She was a sick individual.
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Exactly. We are still out here
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How do former teachers know if they’re part of the class action? What criteria is being used to determine compensention?
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Contact WTU and ask them.
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Exactly because some 2010 didn’t know anything about it while the 2009 teachers were swept under the rug
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It’s a shame how they just settled on the 2010 teachers and didn’t even involve the 2009 teachers that they swept under the rug after being promised that they would be getting settlements also along with the 2010 teachers. Meanwhile the 2009 teachers are still suffering.
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Are yal now to talk about the 2009 teachers
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Thank you for this
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